Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [newbie] Is it possible to put in a source file the date of last tree commit?

[Brian May]

>>>>> "David" == David MENTRE <address@hidden> writes:

    David> Hello Charles, Charles Duffy <address@hidden> writes:

    >> No, Arch does not support this, and there's a strong argument
    >> to be made to the effect that it's a Bad Idea.

    David> Have you a rationale for that? Any keyword that I might use
    David> to look into the mailing-list archive to know why?

Because it is an ugly hack?

* It means the commit operation must modify the source files, during
  what really should be a read-only operation. This in turn implies
  you have to reload any open source files in editors you might have
  running.

* It causes problems for diffs and merges unless you hack these
  operations to ignore keywords. Subversion has even more hacks(?) to
  deal with this[1].

* Any other issues I can't think of?

One the other hand, I can think of some benefits:

* You can distribute CVS files to non-CVS users and keep the version
  information.

* It makes it easy to have a "last modified date" in documentation.

* Subversion docs say: "Because this information changes each time the
  file changes, and more importantly, just after the file changes, it
  is a hassle for any process except the version control system to
  keep the data completely up-to-date. Left to human authors, the
  information would inevitably grow stale."

* Any others?

[1] From the subversion documentation:
Keywords and Spurious Differences

The user-visible result of keyword substitution might lead you to think that
every version of a file with that feature in use differs from the previous
version in at least the area where the keyword anchor was placed. However, this
is actually not the case. While checking for local modifications during svn
diff, and before transmitting those local modifications during svn commit,
Subversion "un-substitutes" any keywords that it previously substituted. The
result is that the versions of the file that are stored in the repository
contain only the real modifications that users make to the file.
-- 
Brian May <address@hidden>